My Town Exiles One Family Every Year To Stay “Perfect.” My Father Just Got A Promotion, And Now We Are Standing At The Border With Nothing. But Someone Is Waiting For Us In The Dark.

The New Normal

Two years after our exile, my family gathered for dinner in the house we were able to buy with restitution money and my father’s new income. It was a real house with a yard and enough bedrooms for everyone. My sister came over with her partner, and she looked stable and happy, laughing at jokes and helping set the table and acting like a regular person instead of someone broken.

My parents were genuinely happy talking about community projects and future plans instead of dwelling on what we lost. Thea joined us because she was basically family now. She and my mother cooked together while my father grilled outside. My best friend stopped by with his family and we all ate together on the back porch. We talked about the future instead of the past: college plans and career goals and where we wanted to live long term. Normal conversations that families have when they’re not traumatized and desperate.

I looked around at everyone and realized we’d actually healed. Not perfectly and not completely. My sister still took medication and had therapy twice a week. My father still had nightmares about losing everything. I still felt shame about hiding from my best friend’s goodbye. But we were genuinely healing instead of just surviving. We built real lives in a real community with people who actually cared about each other. That was more than the old town ever gave us.

I’m 20 years old now, working part-time at Wallace’s foundation while finishing my degree. I’ve learned that justice isn’t about revenge or perfect endings. The founding families are in prison serving long sentences. The exile system is destroyed and can never come back. We built something better than what we lost: a community based on actual mutual support instead of fear and competition.

I still carry shame about hiding from my best friend’s goodbye, and I probably always will. That moment defined my cowardice in a way I can’t erase. But I turned that cowardice into courage when it mattered most. I testified in court. I helped document the abuse. I stood up to the people who destroyed us. We survived systematic cruelty, fought back, won real accountability, and built a community where people actually help each other.

Wallace tells me his wife would be proud of what we accomplished. My sister tells me she’s grateful I helped bring down the system that destroyed John. My parents tell me they’re proud of who I became after exile forced me to grow up fast. That’s not a perfect ending, but it’s a real one, and it’s ours.